In his post, Dan Bieler explains that such business platforms support:

· The infrastructure that connect ecosystem participants. Business platforms help organizations transform from local and linear ways of doing business toward virtual and exponential operations.

· A single source of truth for ecosystem participants. Business platforms become a single source of truth for ecosystems by providing all ecosystem participants with access to the same data.

· Business model and process transformation across industries. Platforms support agile reconfiguration of business models and processes through information exchange inside and between ecosystems.

A single source of truth (or trust) for ecosystem participants is something that rings a bell for every Master Data Management (MDM) practitioner. The news is that the single source will not be a single source within a given enterprise, but a single source that encompasses the business ecosystem of trading partners.